[AN OVERSTUFFED LEATHER CHAIR APPEARS JEST BEHIND JESUS’S HEELS. HE DROPS HIMSELF INTO THE SEAT. JONATHAN DOES THE SAME.]

So how does that make you feel?

I feel like you’re mocking psychiatry.

I am not mocking! I am God’s omnibenevolence.

So you always do the right thing?

I always to the good thing. The right thing.

How? Why?

God is one. He is all-good, all-powerful, all-aware. The Problem of Evil in philosophy is like this: If people suffer and God chooses not to end it, he is not all-good. If he is unaware of their suffering, he isn’t omnipotent. If he cannot stop it, he is not omnipotent. People suffer. Ergo God lacks at least one defining trait. And God is not God.

So the trinity — each one is one aspect.

There is indeed more in heaven than dreamed in philosophy.

Did God — the part of God not here — did he create you?

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

What?

Christians! You know phrases and bits here and there, especially the Protestants. We still cannot be of one mind about Luther. And the argument over Paul… Peter would save us the trouble…

I know I’m alive. I never died. The Apocalypse hasn’t happened.

Apocalypse, Revelation… John of Patmos cannot be bent from his timeless prayer for forgiveness. He has a shitty memory and tried to unify the books of the prophets. Daniel wasn’t a prophet. God revealed the truth to him, he passed it along. And was well-rewarded, on balance. …Spent a year locked underneath a house. Misunderstanding. He took it well.

What?

What will/is/was being is not as any human could know. And Revelation is about the popular fear among Jews at the time that Gaius CLaudius Ceasar — see six characters, six, six. …Anyway, why would I have a freaking sword in my mouth? John… He made mistakes. He did his best at what he thought best.

Am I alive, Jesus?

Yes.

Is this my body?

All who believe in me shall not taste death. Azrael snatches people to heaven before the Spirit leaves or becomes nothing.

But I don’t recall being close to death. I think this place is real and beyond my comprehenmsion. But I believe it is a place ultimately made of matter, just as all things.

So what?

Huh?

Does it matter? Can matter exist outside of the universe? No. So yes we are in a place God made according to his will.

We’re on earth then!

Look around, Jon. Think about it. Do you ride angels through a recreated four-D tunnel, stupid as it is, on earth? Do chairs appear below your butt whenever you want to sit?

No. I don’t argue that this place is like anything on earth, I argue that it was made from the products of the earth. Silicon maybe. Fiber optic tubulues. Light that is data. I argue — oh God!

What, child?

It’s in my skull! It’s in the back of my head! Get it out get it out get it out get it out–